Absolution
by Ianuaria
Summary: Addison deciding to tell Derek about the affair, in a world where he doesn't walk in on her and Mark. Based on winter machine's prompt.
1. Chapter 1

**_For winter machine, in my left hand._**

* * *

She has to tell him, she knows that. She's known it since the beginning, known it since her fingernails scraped the mattress that was wearing unevenly on his side as she tore away damp flannel, hid the evidence of her mistakes.

She needs to tell him, because he'll notice. Fifteen years he's slept beside her on the right side of the bed. He knows every inch of her, every gesture, every expression.

Then again, it's not like he's looking too closely, or at all, these days.

She wants to tell him, because it's not something he can ignore, not like he ignores her increasingly pathetic attpts for attention.

He can't say _not now,Addie,_ not when she tells him she screwed his best friend.

She throws the sheets in the washer the housekeeper taught her to use and jabs buttons till it cleanses her sins, steeps in the shower until the water runs cold, scrubs until she's raw, and she still feels stained, Marked.

Literally.

She's good at keeping secrets though; she learned young. She can keep this a secret, bury it inside of her like him last night, but she won't, because he deserves to know. Deserves better than her.

She puts on an old dark blue shirt, worn soft, they both have one like it. She's not sure if this one is Derek's or Mark's.

It's okay to say that about a shirt but not about a baby and she spends a panicky week of uncertainty counting and counting and recounting but it could be anyone's, really, and she contemplates letting the secret inside of her announce itself, loud and proud, undeniable, until she feels the familiar clenching pain and the red stain of regret.

She's going to have to tell him after all.

It might have been easier if she'd told him three months ago, when it started. Even back then, it would have been her who had to shoulder the responsibility of breaking Derek's heart.

Mark wouldn't. Amy wouldn't, even though she walked in on them in her office, lips unfamiliar against each others, hesitant fingers and restrained limbs. She laughed and slammed the door shut; she'd jumped and knocked against her desk and the glass framed professionally shot wedding portrait slid to the floor like she wanted to. The glass was strong though; didn't break. Just a spiderweb of cracks that caught the light and sparkled. Still beautiful.

It took her husband two weeks to notice. He frowned as he ran a finger over the flawed glass and it didn't look sharp but it cut his finger like it did hers and when she sucked his finger into her mouth she swallowed blood along with her confession because now wasn't the time, not now when he'd finally noticed that not everything was still perfect.

She tells him she bumped into the desk and he smiles, _be more careful, Addie,_ and she wants to scream that she is, she always is. Wasn't it just a kiss?

It might have been easier if it wasn't Mark, Mark who's his best friend and his brother and who comes to Christmas every year. They were friends long before she met them; their bond is time-honored. She's not sure who would hurt him the worst. The possibility that it might be her is too frightening.

It might have been easier if he were ever actually around, but he isn't, and she gets away with the jacket on the floor and the bruised appearance of her mouth because he doesn't come home the next morning either, not even though she waited up all night, hidden on the stairs, boldened by fear. She was going to tell him.

She twisted her rings relentlessly around her finger, diamond cutting gouges into reddening skin, thinking and thinking and thinking. She's a worrier, always has been. She used to think it made her better prepared for unseen eventualities but she never planned for this one.

Maybe she's always been a cheater too, maybe it's in her blood. Maybe Mark is her first, in her lineup of nannies and piano teachers and cooks and Jolene the French tutor. Except that they don't have children. Maybe that's better. Less messy. Less collateral damage.

He wanted them; four, he said once, and looked hurt when she laughed. They settled on two, whittled down to one when she accepted the second fellowship. They haven't spoken about it in a while.

She's always taken comfort in numbers, in order, so she lines up her options. One, she'll tell him and he'll leave her. Two, she won't tell him and he'll find out and leave her. Three, she won't tell him and he won't find out and they'll live on miserably ever after.

But at least he'll be here, she reasons, jumping as headlights sweep past the windows, but it isn't him. She falls asleep against the banister, still feeling his body against hers, inside her, insistent, his mouth on herhers, his hands burning into her skin, leaving marks she's sure won't fade. Scarlet A's.

She wakes to sun slanting across her face, rain cleared away, a new beginning to the end of them. He's still not home and she's halfway dressed for work before she realises it's Sunday and how sad is it that she doesn't even have to consider that _he_ might be having an affair too because he's not that kind of person. The kind of person she is, who tosses aside vows at the first suggestion of trouble. If he loves anything at all its the hospital and surgery and skull flaps and brains. How can she compete with that?

Maybe if she cracked her head open , he'd notice, she thinks morbidly as bends over, panting, legs burning.

She's running. In circles, wide and lapping, again and again, feet pounding mindlessly as she as she pushes harder, faster. She can't run away but she can run until she's tired, too tired to think about what has to happen when he finally does come home.

He will, at some point. She's learned not to call him because she usually ends up sounding whiny and needy and his curt replies hurt worse than his silence.

Mark calls her. He keeps calling, filling up her voicemail, texting.

He's leaning against the front door she pushed him against last night when she gets back, expressionless , silent.

She tells him he needs to leave. He tells her she needs to tell her husband. Neither of them know what's good for themselves and yet here they are, telling each other what to do. They listen anyway.

By early afternoon the guilt fades to annoyance that turns to anger, and she thinks it might have been justified after all. She deserves better than his cursory glances and canned compliments. She's beautiful. Hot. Wildly attractive.

Maybe this will wake him up. Make him sit up and take notice, get his failing act together. It says _don't take me for granted_ and maybe he'll take it that way.

Because he does take her for granted. He assumes she's always going to be there when he come home. Well, maybe she won't, she thinks fiercely, and then imagines not seeing him after a long day and it hurts like a million little tiny cuts, like the ones from the broken frame in her office, the one he said he'd replace but still hasn't.

The pain gate mechanism, first explained by Melzack and Wall in 1965, says that if you stimulate pressure receptors along with free nerve endings, it dulls the pain.

Non-painful input closes the "gates" to painful input, which prevents pain sensation from traveling to the central nervous system. Therefore, stimulation by non-noxious input is able to suppress pain.

Simply put, something on top of it can numb the pain.

Anesthesia. No feeling. It sounds good, doesn't it?

She tried putting Mark on top of it, which didn't work, so she tries drinking instead.

By late afternoon she's a few glasses down and unsatisfyingly numbed, her alcohol tolerance winning out over the wine she's been sipping, so she pours herself a tumbler of his scotch and takes burning swallows of alcohol and self pity, tears welling but not falling.

She's always the left-behind one. He'll leave her, and she'll be all alone in this horror house of memories. She'll lose his family, be forced to return to her own. She'll lose their friends, because after all its her mistake. He's the victim here.

Oy maybe...maybe he'll see the error of his ways and sob and hold her close and tell her he loves her he's always loved her and he's so so sorry for treating her so terribly and maybe it's time to put the bottle away because this isn't a telenovela and Derek - no matter how much she loves him - is no soapy hero. Although _she_ might fit right in as an adulterous wife.

She toys with makeup, covers the flaws she can see. The others are deeper, but he won't see them because he never looks past her surface. A smile, _hi,honey,_ and he'll never know.

Maybe it's her fault, she thinks, an about turn from her musings not half an hour ago. Maybe she should have smiled more and then she wouldn't have these frown lines. Maybe he hates the red lipstick she favors; didn't he swipe it away almost angrily when she kissed him in the cafeteria?

She twirls in front of the mirror, hands pressed to her flat stomach and wonders if he would have preferred stretch marks and softness.

Mark said she's beautiful, mumbled it around a mouthful of trembling sensitive flesh.

He's all right, Mark. A little crass, a little reckless, but sweet under the bravado. Tender. They could be something.

She remembers she used to hate him, at first, Derek's friend who leered and cracked jokes and slept his way through their whole med school class. He grew on her slowly. Like Derek said he would.

Derek says a lot of things, like they'll go on vacation this year, that he'll try to take more time off. That he'll go see Amy. That they're all right, that there's nothing to worry about.

He's right on the last count - there's nothing to worry about, because _nothing_ is what's left of them. She finished off the last of it with her betrayal.

That's what he'll see it as. Betrayal. He's a possessive, jealous type of lover. _Mine_ , he liked to say, and secretly she loved it. Not so much anymore, but it doesn't matter because she's not _his_ anything anymore. Or she won't be, not after she tells him. And she's going to tell him.

She'll feel better when she does. Like she's offloading some of the guilt of this ruined marriage onto his shoulders. She'll feel lighter. Absolved, if only partially.

Her rings have chafed a red circle around her finger. There's a reason why you're supposed to wear your rings on the fourth finger of your left hand, but she can't recall it through her daze.

She can't stop fiddling with them either; she wants to make sure they're still there, for now.

It's getting dark now, streetlights coming on. Rain falls slanting through the yellow beams and drips against the windows, she watches the drops trace their own paths down the glass in a ltitle race - _if that one finishes first I'll tell him, if it doesn't I won't -_ until her breath fogs it too much to see.

She can't _see_ , that's the problem. She can't see the way he will react when she tells him. Because she _is_ going to tell him.

She can't see what he will do. What he will say. She can always see , she's always ten steps ahead. She knows when it will fall apart, when she'll get hurt, be disappointed. She doesn't know how it's supposed to work when she's the one doing the hurting and disappointing.

Her mother used to say something... the words slide across her foggy mind and she sats them out loud, voice cracking and hoarse. She realises she hasn't said a word since Mark, this morning. Or maybe she's just hoarse from finally screaming endessly, wordlessly,senselessly into the empty house _( she's wanted to do that for ages)_ last night as he made her forget.

It's hard to see the end when you're so close. That's what she used to say. Probably still does, not that she's bothered to ever call her daughter.

So that must be it; this is the end of DerekandAddison, so she can't see it. Better that way, actually, that way she only has to endure the pain once.

She feels pleasantly numb though. Anesthetic. His scotch has worked it's magic.

He's still not home.

She goes through the heap of mail on the table, sorting into two piles like always.

 _Dr.D. Shepherd._ _Dr.A. Shepherd._ _Drs. Shepherd._ It's an invitation to something about a charity, maybe the last time anyone refers to them as one unit again. She runs her fingers absentmindedly over the titles so many times she might wear a hole through the cream paper envelope.

And in the end she thinks herself into exhausted slumber on the couch, wakes to the sound of his key in the door and the imprint of the envelope on her cheek.

She _is_... not. She's not going to tell him, he's smiling and he's happy, reaching for her, warm lips against her chapped numb ones, handing her flowers. Red roses.

"I have something to tell you." His voice fills with warmth, melts her icy resolve.

He does deserve better though.

But she can't - won't - tell him. She's good at keeping secrets. Especially about affairs.

"Me too." she says woodenly, a rubbery smile on her plastic face. She's a doll, a plaything. He picks her up and plays with her whenever he wants and puts her safely away in a box when he's done.

She deserves better. She's going to tell him.

"You first." he grins, his little-boy grin, eyes bright and wide, guileless, innocent. She can't hurt him now...

She's going to tell him...later.

"No,you." she exhales. Whatever he's going to say has got to be better than whatever story she can come up with in two seconds because she's _not_ telling him now.

"Was it not important?" he frowns slightly, annoyed at his three seconds she's wasted. "Anyway, I -"

"I slept with Mark." she says tonelessly at the same time he says "I'm being considered for Chief." and they stare at each other across the flowers like they did eleven years ago as they took the vows she broke.

She clutches the hot little circle of gold in her hand, clinging to the last bit of his warmth, the slam of the door echoing in her ears. She sits there, head clearing slowly, roses thick in the air.

She remembers now. There's a vein, that's supposed to run from the fourth finger of the left hand , straight to your heart. That's why you wear them on that finger. She slides his ring onto hers and it spins loosely above the diamond and the gold he put there. It's too big for her, falling off when she gets up.

It'll be safer in a box.

* * *

 ** _Based on winter machine's prompt ' Addison telling Derek about the affair in a world where he doesn't walk in on them.'_**

 ** _Verrrry vague and rambling, a stream of consciousness type piece but not really, set during the day after they sleep together as she waits for Derek to come home so she can tell him._**

 ** _Pleeease review, I'd love to know what you guys think of this._**

 ** _Pretty please with a cherry on top._**


	2. Chapter 2

**_It was a oneshot, I swear. But you guys wanted Derek's reaction, and I was bored, and this happened. Utterly unrealistic, I know._**

 ** _Enjoy._**

* * *

 _"I slept with Mark." "I'm being considered for Chief."_

Even in the end, they overlapped. Words bleeding into each other, drowning each other out.

He let the door slam shut behind him, the sound ringing in his ears with her words.

 _I slept with Mark._

 _Be mine_ he'd said to her, when he knelt in front of her that soft summer evening. On this very corner, actually, just outside St. Luke's Garden.

She'd wanted to go to the church because they made it , they finally made it, they were doctors - _any church will do, I'm a WASP and we only actually go to church on Christmas -_ and it was the day before graduation, end of summer in the air, the beginning of fall. The beginning of change.

He tugged her into the little garden afterwards, there were butterflies and flowers and it was so perfect he almost stopped because it might have been too cheesy and she's _not_ cheesy but the ring was burning a hole in his pocket and after tomorrow they'd have no real reason to stay together. He wanted her to be officially his.

So in the shade of an oak he'd knelt and asked her; _be mine_ , and when she pulled him to his feet she stumbled a little and said _I always was._

Not anymore.

He catches his reflection in a plate glass window and he knows he's vain but he looks okay for someone who's been through what he has tonight. Why did she do it?

What does Mark have that he doesn't? Mark was always the needy one. The surrogate Shepherd. He needed their love and their protection and their warmth and he soaked it up greedily, couldnt get enough, even as he himself ran in circles trying to avoid it all.

Wasn't it enough? Did he have to worm his way into this most private of relationships as well, steal what was never meant to be his?

He staggers against a metal trashcan, bile rising in his throat as he pictures them together...where? The office? His or hers? An on call room , that would make sense. His monochrome penthouse, as colorless as she is vivid. Their home. No.

The possibilities dance through his mind in sickening Technicolor as unworried pedestrians pass him by - just another drunk on a Sunday night. He finds another on the next street corner where she'd pressed him up against the signal post to kiss him, the new diamond on her hand scratching behind his ear.

The man stares hollow-eyed at him, taking in the calfskin jacket and leather shoes, obviously confused. He peels the jacket off - last year's birthday gift from her.

"Have it." he says, and the other man accepts.

Did he do the same with her? Push her to Mark? All the canceled dinners and forgotten birthdays and anniversaries...did he do this?

But why would she pick Mark? It could have been anyone at all, she turns heads wherever she goes. Was it as random as this drunk he's chosen? Because he was simply _there_?

Mark,though. His best friend. His brother. He actually said it to him once, they were about thirteen and he was particularly overwhelmed by the wave of Shepherd sisters and he'd whispered fiercely to Mark in the dark of the room they were sharing - _you're my brother ,Mark_. He doesn't recall what Mark said. If he said anything at all.

It's late, dark and getting cold and his phone buzzes in his pocket. _Addie,_ the bright little screen says, _Addie_.

He called her Montgomery first, that day in the lab, peering through smudgy goggles and gagging on formalin. _Hey Montgomery, you want to go first?_

She did. She always likes to be first. First in med school, first solo surgery. Chief Resident. First to get a fellowship. First to make attending, a full week before him. First to break their vows.

He's thought about it, he won't lie. They've been ... distant, for a while now. She works as much as he does but her specialty doesn't drag in as many emergencies as his does and she's home more often. She used to wait, curling on the sagging couch in his office they'd christened with giggles and muffled moans, wait for him to finish and tuck her arm into his as they left.

There was the blonde resident in his OR, the pretty blue eyed neuro fellow, the fresh face d candy striper, the nurse, the receptionist at his practice. But he only _thought_. She acted. Always first.

And then he called her Addison, _Addisonwouldyouliketogetcoffee._ She said yes, and then people were calling them _AddisonandDerek._ He liked it the other way round, but whatever.

And then he called her Addie, because saying her full name took too long, he teased her. _Addie_ , short and sweet , two things of which she is neither.

His ring finger feels bare, light, but his feet are heavy and his legs ache but he savors it because it's the slightest distraction. The skin where his ring used to sit is a shade paler, unchanged from eleven years ago whereas the rest of him is different.

His phone has stopped ringing.

He could leave. Go somewhere new, start over. Clean slate, rewrite himself. She's written so much of who he is that he feels like he won't be much of anything if she's gone.

Fifteen years they've been together. Thirty five years he's known Mark. He knows them inside out. The good and the bad and the dirty and the ugly and the deepest secrets that only make appearances drenched in alcohol.

How didn't he see this coming?

Or did he? Was he too busy to notice? _You work too much_ they all say. His mother and his sisters and his wife.

But that's how he made it here, the youngest Chief candidate. His work has paid off. He didn't realise it would cost him his marriage though. Because it almost certainly has.

He can't look at her now, can't think of her, not without imagining Mark's hands burned into her, her perfume on his skin. He's always been possessive and he knows it, he's the guy who gets surly at bars when men stare at her. She used to think it was sweet. _Don't worry,_ she'd say, _you're stuck with me._

Stuck. He's still stuck, here in this city that reminds him of her at every turn. She's everywhere here, a laughing taunting ghost. He opens his wallet to pay for the coffee he's bought and there she is, smiling up at him in miniature. He needs to get away.

What would it be like, he wonders, to just get in the car, drive, aimlessly, let the road take him wherever? He's never done anything as spontaneous before. He's one to plan and plot and deliberate. _She's_ the impulsive one.

She's a lot of things. Intelligent and stubborn and funny - a lot of people don't know that, actually, that she has a wicked sense of humour. She's a worrier, he can imagine her right now, on that couch, shredding perfect cuticles. Or maybe not. Maybe she's gone. She's not a runner, though; if anything she'll cling to the end, dig her nails into what's left of them.

How the hell did she do something so stupid? Screwing his best friend, in his bed. Where she knew he could walk in on them. He realises with the faintest of guilty pangs that he hasn't exactly been home much lately - maybe she thought they'd get away with it. Or maybe she knew they wouldn't, maybe she did it on purpose. _I_ _n your face, Derek_.

He wouldn't put it past her. She's remarkably passive-aggressive. It's something they fight about. Often.

They fight about a lot of things. How he's never home. Why she has to make an issue of everything. Why he leaves his clothes on the bed. Why she leaves her infernal shoes where he'll trip over them. Treatment plans for their shared patients. Dinners with his family- _I'm not going by myself, Derek._ Who drank the last of the coffee in the pot. Why the hell he can't put the goddamn toilet seat down.

But, he realises, these are things they _used_ to fight about. And then make up. Deliciously.

They don't fight anymore. She might roll her eyes, purse her lips, turn away from him in bed. He might spend inhumane hours at the hospital, not return her calls, spend days without speaking. But they don't fight anymore.

How'd they end up here? They were never like this. They promised to be the fun crazy old couple. They used to be nauseatingly in love, that always-touching, food-sharing, annoying couple.

 _Used to be._

He used to be unable to go half a day without seeing her. He used to tell her about his surgeries and ask about hers and he used to want to jump her in the hallway. Did, actually, a fair few times, except in on call rooms - the hallway might have been a bit much.

He doesn't know what he feels anymore, he's sort of numb. Anesthetised. It's a defence mechanism. Maybe it's better this way, because he doesn't have to feel the pain at all.

He takes advantage of it, turns his footsteps backwards and finds himself on the top step he'd stood on hours ago, clutching flowers he knew she thought were cliché and full of hope that this would finally turn things around. He hopes she's gone - to Mark, to the hospital, he doesn't care. The house is completely dark. She's probably with Mark. He closes his eyes, blocks out the images .

He left his keys, he recalls dully, in the pocket of the jacket he gave away.

Nothing more humiliating than having to call your cheating wife to leave her lover and come let you into your own house so you can make a dramatic exit.

But the door is open. It swings open easy as anything when he touches it, there's a puddle on the floor just inside the door. He shut it when he left. He's sure he did. He slammed it hard, the way she's always bitching at him not to. It latches by itself, when you slam it.

The door is open and there are no lights on and this is New York after all even if the neighbourhood is ridiculously expensive and she slept with his best friend but still his heart pounds against his ribs as he edges silently into the foyer.

 _Please no_.

"Derek?"

Her voice is rough, hoarse. He swings around to see her huddled on the couch exactly where he'd left her, eyes glittering emerald in the dark.

"You left the door open?" he exhales harshly, frustrated that she still could make him feel this scared.

"I thought it must have shut." she says softly, and he knows the rusty sounds are probably her wiping surreptitiously at her eyes.

It didn't though. It didn't lock even though he slammed it so hard. He gave away his keys. But it was still open. And she's still here.

"You're still here." he observes, his voice hard and unfamiliar.

"I'm sorry." she chokes. "Derek please, I'm so-"

 _Sorry_ is a good word for what she looks like right now, crushed roses on her lap, eyes red, hair sticking to wet cheeks streaked with mascara.

"Don't bother." he snaps, the anesthesia starting to wear off. "Where's your lover?"

She's on her feet now, unsteady, damp fingers on his arms." I'm sorry, let me show you how sorry I am-" . She's wearing his ring along with hers. It slides the length of her finger and almost falls off when he pushes at her.

He peels her off and deposits her on the couch. " _Don't."_

He can't stand the sight of her, is actually afraid what he'll do if he stays. "I'm leaving. I'll be back in the morning, and you won't be here."

She looks up at him, one hand curling unconsciously into the arm of the couch. "No."

 _The fucking nerve..._

"Excuse me?"

"No." she repeats, shaking her head this time. "I'm holding my ground. We don't quit."

" _Quit?"_ he spits. "This isn't quitting, _Addison_ , there is nothing left to quit. We're over."

"I'm sorry, Derek, it was _one time_ -"

"Fuck you, Addison." he laughs mirthlessly "Guess Mark took care of that already, though."

He's hurt her, he's pierced the armor, he can see it in her eyes.

And he's closing strong fingers over her arms, she's so light, barely anything in his arms, sliding a little in the rainwater puddle , salty water on his cheeks and hers, _we're AddisonandDerek_ and it's raining outside and he used to love her. So much.

So they stand there, not sure who's holding on and who's pushing away- maybe they're both doing a little of each - and she cries and he cries and he pulls her back in even as he steps away from the warmth of her body.

"I'll be back in the morning."

She's standing there in the foyer, shaking ever so slightly, eyes huge. "And..."

"And you'll still be here." he says, half question, half order. "In the morning?"

She nods. "We're not-"

"We're not over." he admits. "Not yet."

She offers a tiny smile. " We're still DerekandAddison."

Well. He's still Derek, and she's still Addison. Maybe they'll find a way to glue themselves back together.

He gives her a smile in return. Or he tries, anyway, and maybe she sees it because there's the faintest spark in her eyes.

"I'll be back in the morning."

He will.

* * *

 ** _Gah. How I wish this happened._**

 ** _I know it's totally tacky to ask for reviews but I'm a bit greedy. It's okay if you didn't like it -tell me about it. Liked it? Tell me about it. Pretty please?_**

 ** _Also I swear I'll update my older fics, I know I'm slacking. I'm just...stuck , at the moment._**


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